Matt Bozon, creative director at WayForward has much to be proud of these days. The company where he works is producing two of the most anticipated titles coming out on the DS this fall: "Contra 4" and "Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck."
Bozon is directing "Contra 4," but we couldn't talk about that in the interview I wrote up for Tuesday's GameFile column. He could speak about his 13 years working at the developer and the fascinating path that brought the teams at that studio to these two major games.
Probably the most interesting part of that journey was the part that had WayForward making "Ping Pals," the infamous DS instant-messaging game that managed to score many zeroes and ones out of 10. The upshot, according to Bozon, is that it got WayForward into the DS development business. But consider the drama involved, quoted from my column:
... the problem with "Ping Pals" wasn't just time. The DS already had an IM program called "Pictochat" that came embedded into every DS. Did anyone raise their hand and ask about that? "I did that on day one," Bozon said, laughing. "THQ had their plan, and they were going to run with it.
"That's probably the game we worked on harder than any other game," he added. "The design doc for that thing was actually a bunch of sticky notes on a dry board, and about every four hours we would redesign the entire game for that entire five-week span because the technology kept shifting. We were working 24 hours a day. There was no point locking the door because there was always somebody in there."
You know the rest. Or at least you think you do. Did you know that there was at least one "Ping Pals" super-fan? Bozon explains that and more -- including how "Duck Amuck" got greenlit -- in GameFile. So click that link above.
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